Monday, 24 March 2014

Thank you for your feedback. I have to say that I was very
disappointed with your comments.

After deciding that the original set of images did not gel,
I went back to my notepad and looked over the previous notes I had made on
similar ideas for this Assignment.

On reviewing the set of notes and ideas for Haddington, I
then journeyed through the town to each of the locations that I had previously
noted, discarding some as although I felt they fitted the brief, they did not
make a cohesive grouping. The fact that I was lucky enough to gather over 20
suitable images during that day did not mean that I wandered around with no
preconceived plan, the notes that I had made pointed me directly to the
locations where I wanted to be. Due to my mobility issues, the actual journey
was planned with almost military precision. I have to make sure that when I go out
on a shoot, I do not overdo things and cause myself pain. My route is planned
and timed so that if I am late then someone knows to come looking for me. As I
was on my own for this shoot, I had to limit the equipment to that which I
could feasibly carry and in this case, a tripod was too heavy.

For Image 1 I deliberately chose f22 as I was using a
11-16mm lens. Previous experience with the lens had already prepared me for
shooting at f22 as I knew the camera speed could go as low as 1/20th
of a second before I would introduce hand held camera shake. I used f22 as I
wanted to keep everything in sharp focus including the reflection in the river.
Had I used f/8 I would have lost definition and colour in the reflection.

Had there been extra notes in the assignment asking for a
cover image I would have adjusted the setup and shot the image with extra space
within the frame, however nothing was detailed in the brief regarding a cover
image so that was not considered. Before undertaking this assignment, I perused
other students’ assignment submissions to ensure I was not copying an idea of
misinterpreting the brief. I was not aware of cover images or conclusion images
in all the works I saw.

Image 2. I used my
knowledge of the camera and the lens for this image. Because the lens has built
in shake reduction I could choose the f stop that I wanted so that I could get
all of the subjects in sharp focus. Allowing the lens to assist meant that I
did not have to select exposure mode and could instead remain on aperture mode.
This enabled me to capture what I wanted rather than allowing the exposure to
control the speed.

Image 3 I wanted to capture the quietness of the moment and
the fact that the elderly gentlemen was sitting on the bench, keeping himself
to himself. He was so engrossed in his reading of the newspaper that he did not
interact with passers-by; which included the family going to feed the birds, the
cyclist and the dog.

Image 4. I appreciate that this image is relatively common,
however I felt it captured the common nature of the activity, which is carried
out regularly by many different folk in the area, showing ‘people in action’.
The timing of the shot was dictated by the starting time of the game.

Image 5 shows that the river path is no longer used as the
main transportation path into the town and has now become a byway used by dog
walkers and people undertaking exercise. It has gone from being a part of the
town’s business to being part of the town’s leisure.

Image 6. This picture was not specifically planned. Although
I had intended to take an unobtrusive, street photography style image (people
unawares), I had not known of the charity event taking place, nor that there
would be live cartoon characters would be in the town square. As such, I took
the image as it arose, spontaneously. I took a couple of images in quick
succession and the image chosen, was, in my opinion, the best one.

DSC_0072. I chose not to include this image in the final six
because I felt that conveyed emptiness and a lack of use which is not what I
feel is happening in the area. I felt that the peace and quietness of the elderly
gentleman in image 3 showed relaxed usage rather than abandonment.

Saturday, 8 March 2014

What: The main brief of this assignment was to draw together
ideas and experiences covered in the course so far and produce six images of a
location in the style of a thought provoking publication.

Where: The Town of Haddington.

When: Midmorning

How: I undertook research of several locations. After
photographing and collating one set of images I decided that they did not gel
so I changed location and shot the town of Haddington.

I decided that I wanted to capture images that
provoked an emotional response in me. I moved from place to place and waited
until I saw something that I felt that I wanted to capture within the context
of the assignment.

What I wanted to achieve was to capture the
peacefulness of Haddington even though it is an expanding and busy market town.
I wanted to show that a lot of the activity takes place in one of two locations
- either around the main street at the town’s Corn Exchange or along the river.

The river was one of the first sources of industry
in the town. At one time Haddington had a large wood industry and a large mill
and waterwheel to grind the grain that was then traded in the Corn Exchange.
The town itself is carved into two by the river and is crossed at various
points by small bridges.

I think I succeeded well in capturing the town,
showing that even though it has lost the mills and the heavier industry, the
spirit of the town still survives and people now use the river for
entertainment and pleasure.

Just beside the bridge the river runs past The
Waterside Bistro. This building was originally a coach house, inn and shops
before being renovated and is now a popular bar and restaurant.

The bright white of the building reflects in
all manner of sunlight and produces a lovely reflection in the river nearly all
year round. It always makes me happy when I pass to see the reflection in the
calm path of the river.

The river provides a relaxing spot for people
to pass time either by feeding the swans and ducks or by sitting peacefully by
the water’s edge reading a newspaper.

I chose to use the telephoto as I did not
want to disturb him as he looked like he just wanted to sit quietly and pass
time on his own. At first I thought the hat on the end of the bench was his but
realised that it had been left there by someone else, probably found in the
path and left there just in case someone came looking for it.

During the historical period known as the 'Rough Wooing' there happened a siege of Haddington and soldiers from the French village of Aubigny came to support the Scottish troops. Due to this link the two locations were twinned in 1965. Since the twinning, Haddington has had a resurgence and interest in sport and the Aubigny Sports centre and grounds, which were built as a result of the twinning are now used regularly by local schools and the public.

The sports centre sits beside the river and there
are always dog walkers, runners and cyclists using the old tow path which runs
parallel to the watercourse. Here a cyclist takes their dog out for a run along
the river path which runs through the town out to the east and west of the town.
The dog looked like it was having the time of its life as it ran long.

I cropped this image down as the dog and the cyclist
were too far in the background and were too small; the balance of the image was
on the path and the trees rather than on the intended subjects.

Turning back to the town, there was a celebration on
for the third “birthday” of a local children’s organisation, and visitors
to the corn centre were met with Mickey and Minnie mouse. Many of the children
were surprised and excited to see cartoon characters here in the town.

I liked the fact that the small child showed no fear
initially and was pulling her parent toward Minnie before being distracted by
the fountain. One of the other children pulled her mobile phone and
photographed Minnie as they approached and then photographed the smaller girls,
their parent and Minnie with the backs against the fountain.

I found it quite difficult to reduce my final
selection to six images as I found I was having difficulty giving the full
sense of place of the town. In the end I had to choose to remove a couple of
images that while I found them ideal artistically they did not fit into the
brief.

There was a missed opportunity to capture an image of
Haddington at its busiest during the school drop off and pickup periods as this
is when most people are out and about, as now being a commuter town the town centre
itself can be very quiet during the day even at weekends.

I have added the other six images at the end of this
assignment.

If I had been taking images for no end result I may
have spent more time on the smaller botanical area in town which is full of
plants and insects and not so many people. I would also have spent more time within
the town limits capturing the passing people. I would have also spent more time
photographing in internals and externals of the buildings. The final collection
of images would probably not be quite so focused as they are.

I really liked
the colour of this image as the reflections from the building opposite really
brighten up an overcast location. However the lack of people within the image
means that the image is not quite suitable.

Tuesday, 4 March 2014

What: The main brief of this exercise was to take an image from
a previous exercise and using processing software adjust the image to make two
versions of the image.

Where: Image used was from the Chinese Lantern Exhibition

When: Late evening.

How: I chose
the image as I felt that I could adapt it well using processing software to
create two versions of the image. One giving promenance to the figures in the
settings and the other making the settings stand out.

I really wanted to keep the image as
unprocessed as possible, I did not want to go mad with adjusting brightness,
contrast, selective colour, colour intensity.

As the images I used were Jpeg only as
these are the only type of images produced with the camera I did not want to
process them too much as I knew that it could spoil the image quite quickly.

By adjusting the colour intensity and contrast slightly I have
given the image a higher range of colour. I did not want to make the image too
bright as I did not want to over expose the lanterns and blow out the colour
making them bright blurs. In this case I balanced the colours of the lanterns
against the backgrounds and tried to bring out the colour of the jackets of the
individuals giving them prominence against the background.

By adding a slight gradiated filter to the background I have
brought down the contrast and brightness of the top of the buildings in the
background. This has made the background much darker and suddenly it takes on a
greater prominence in the image as it looms over the courtyard and the people
below.

I was quite surprised by this exercise as I did not think it was quite
as easy to adjust the prominence of the foreground and background in such a
way. It made me view the final image quite differently as the background was
just that a background to the first image.

What: The main brief of this exercise was to use certain
techniques to photograph a person or persons making them anonymous and less
prominent than the area that they are in.

Where: Various Locations

When: Differing times.

How: While
out photographing other exercises and other practices I kept an eye out for
situations where I could photograph people making them anonymous against the
background of the location that they were in.

I chose these photographs for the exercise as
I feel that they work very well in making the people within the images
completely anonymous and indistinguishable against the foreground of the image.
I liked how doing this exercise forced the people into the background and made
the balance of the image weigh towards the surrounds rather than the people.

I really like this staircase, the way
that the lines are out of balance with the rest of the building gives me a
small happy feeling. I just like the out of kilter perspective of the image.

Here the person is walking up the
stairs their back is the camera and they are also small against a large space. The
fact that you cannot see the persons face means that you have to apply your own
experience of the location to them. In this case I believe the person was
enjoying the location.

I noticed a number of people walking backwards and forwards over a
high gantry way between two parts of the building. Part of the structure had vertical
slats on it and as people walked past it gave them a zoetrope style of
movement. I waited until one of the people started to walk back and I captured
them as they passed between the slats, partially obscuring them from view. I
like fact that they are shadow like and by pushing into the partial view that
they are phased out of the image and that the attention is given to the
location rather than the individual.

I was watching the visitors as they
milled around the car at the entrance of the building. The car is one of the
formula 1card driven by a childhood hero who I discovered was also very
dyslexic. I wanted to take a long exposure showing motion blur as I wanted to
capture the different lengths of time that people stopped at the car. Motion
blur also makes them anonymous pushing the balance over to what they are
looking at rather than the people themselves.

Here I attempted to combine motion blur with multiple exposure
using a fast strobe flash. Unfortunately all that happened was that the fast
strobe blurred the image more than I expected, perhaps if the camera had been
better supported and the location darker it may have made a difference.

While photographing the Chinese lanterns
exhibition I noticed that I could silhouette people against the lanterns if
correctly composed. I tried a number of shots before this obtaining this image.
Here the figure is silhouetted against the lanterns and the reflections of the
lanterns and has almost disappeared against the light. The person body shape
almost mirrors the stance of the figures that she is observing.

I really wanted to try using a tilt shift lens to see if I could
make figures anonymous, here the people are a distance away and although there
is a large number of them and they fill quite a large space, by using the tilt
shift lens the figures have been made to look small and model like anonymising
them by our own concept of perspective which is fooled by the tilt shift lens.

This has been a good exercise as it has allowed me to work with ideas that I have had for a while as well as teaching me the concept of giving anonymity to figures within images through a variety of techniques.

About Me

I am attempting to complete the OCA Course,Context and Narrative and this is my learning log for this course.
I have fibromyalgia with complications; Neuropathic and Neurogenic pain in my legs and spine and I have a tonic pupil which neither reacts to light nor contracts or dilates. Recently I have been told that this is further compounded by a loss of all central vision in my left eye. This is all making the course a little harder than I expected.